In Which We Go Loko for Loko Puffs

Sunday's all-day hangover deserves an explanation.

Ever since moving to Austin, V has been frustrated by the city's lack of art, so we booked a day of art prowling during the East Austin Studio Tour, hoping to have our minds changed. We started at Domy Books, which is a place that can only exist when enough New Yorkers have invaded your town (the 'zine selection had me drooling), and picked up a map. We then marched on foot around the Cesar Chavez-to-Riverside region and saw a bajillion works of art. A lot of it sucked! But there were some gems as well. Favorites included the weirdly intense toothbrushing paintings of Emily Mitchell (whose giant food-eating pieces need to grace the cover of a magazine, STAT); Rob Rough's bleached black denim paintings, in particular the one titled "Divas De Los Muertos"; my friend Payam Sarabi's wood outdoor furniture; art psychotherapist Deanna Miesch's wax-and-flower covered globes, some of which were hung upside down, which would delight many Australians I know; and whoever made that fantastic black velvet painting of Teen Wolf in his letter jacket hanging at Domy, which was sadly sold by the time I found it because it was surely a bargain at whatever price.

We also grabbed a burger at Your Mom's, which I'd heard good things about, due to their practice of putting the cheese and other ingredients inside the patty. The burger was fine, but we must draw a line somewhere on burger price, America, and $9.25 is well past wherever that line is. Also, they charged extra for fries. Also, those fries had the consistency of gummy worms. 

So far, so sober. We ran a few other errands then headed over to Austin and Jackie's for a housewarming party. This was where things took a sharp left turn to Drunktown. You see, there was a keg of Lone Star there, and for whatever reason, I decided to enjoy as much of that keg as possible.

Six beers in, our usual party friends appeared, and they were bearing Four Loko, the suddenly infamous energy malt bev that's getting its ass banned all over the place because it tastes like cough syrup for skunks and also makes undergraduates fall down on the ground. I sampled a few sips from the different cans, each flavor getting its own weird neon pattern of camouflage (like what Zack and Screech and Slater would wear to play paintball), and they were all uniquely awful. Then, people started pouring it into my Lone Star cup, which created a cocktail that I dub FourLorn, and that tasted something like ... you know when you forget about some vegetables in the vegetable drawer of your refrigerator for too long? You know the liquid that sometimes results in the bottom of that drawer? Like that.

Needless to say, I was obnoxiously obliterated for most of the night, and it was only everyone else's obnoxious obliteration that kept me from being tied up and gagged in a corner for my own good. Then, at some point, like an undergraduate, I fell down, luckily into a chair near some tiki torches. 

As I fought the urge to pass out, I stared at this gargantuan oak tree that hovered over the roof of the house next door (where people were probably having trouble sleeping), and the way the branches formed a nimbus struck me powerfully -- one eye felt like it was reaching out to touch the tree farther than the other, and there was a stereoscopic effect not unlike those Magic Eye pictures, and I think I saw a dog catching a frisbee. Then I went ahead and blacked out, with intermittent interruptions from Veronica making sure I was okay, descending into my field of vision like a drunken angel each time, and if I remember correctly, there was a lap dance from Damian.

The weirdest part of the two-hour nap was its instantly sobering effect. It was as if I'd had a beer or two and that's it. I thought that somehow, miraculously, I had escaped whatever fate I deserved and emerged from the other end of a hard party unscathed. I went home and crawled into bed anticipating a pleasant dream and a cheerful lazy breakfast the next day.

Instead, I dreamed that this pixie kept trying to rape me. We were in a car, and I was driving, and she kept crawling into my lap and trying to remove my shirt. I rolled down the window and shoved her out, but she turned into a bat and kept clawing at me. I rolled the window up on the bat trying to pinch it, but it turned into an enormous parrot with one red-yellow-green wing still inside the car, flapping in my face as I drove and screamed.

It's more than 24 hours after that party now. I'm still hungover. Verdict: There's no need for more than One Loko.